


still they called her "champion"

by frondescence



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Purple Mage Hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 15:28:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5790805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frondescence/pseuds/frondescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirkwall weighed heavy on her heart. (Short purple mage Hawke musings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	still they called her "champion"

                In retrospect, it had always all been leading to disaster.

                At the time, her rise to power had felt--natural. Easy.

                It helped that she never took anything seriously.

                She played the people of Kirkwall like cards; joked and teased and held her friends at arm's length; charmed and flirted her way through every problem, and when that didn't work, killed, and then joked some more.

                And it had worked for a while; it had worked beautifully. She, a farm girl, an apostate, daughter of the prodigal daughter, lived in a mansion. She was a blood mage who was _so highly regarded_ that even Kirkwall's infamous templars could not touch her. She had loyal friends in every arm of the city, ready to follow her into hell and back for money, for glory, for fun. She was invincible.

                …until.

*

                Until it all started to unravel.

                She should have seen it coming: the Hawkes' emigration to Kirkwall had been punctuated by death and by loss. Bethany: the best of them, gone in one sickening instant. (But it wasn't uncommon during the days of the Blight to lose a sister, or a brother, or a child, and their loss was shared in every corner of Ferelden.)

                Still, something about Kirkwall weighed heavy on her heart. Possibly it was the influence Corypheus, the Warden prison underneath the city tainting and staining and ruining everything above. Possibly it was her own naïve thinking that her fun could last forever--that the most unstable city in all the Free Marches could sustain _her_ indefinitely.

                Whatever the case and whatever the cause, Karrie Hawke began to fail. And fail. And fail.

                She thought she could keep her family safe, shelter them within the web of her own dangerous dealings. She thought she could help Merrill support her fragile position between her family and her dangerous research.

                She thought she could buoy Anders on a tide of jokes and distractions and tender kisses--and she _thought_ she could trust him.

                She was wrong, wrong, wrong.

                In the end, she had to flee, borne away by chaos from her friends, her home, her mother's grave.

                Ten years, everything she'd worked for--gone.

                Still they called her "Champion."

                (After a while, the title was bitter on her tongue.)

*

                So this is where you're hiding, the Inquisitor joked, finding Hawke sequestered away on a parapet in Skyhold.

                "I was told not to let that Seeker find me," Karrie replied, her voice humorless, her gaze cast far over the people below.

                Yet still, in her iconic armor, streaked with startling red across her nose and her forearm--

                "You sure stand out for someone who's trying to hide," Adaar said.

                Then Karrie turned, and some light came into her tired eyes, and she replied: "At least I don't have gray skin and horns."

                And they had both laughed then.

 

                (The next day, privately, to Varric she said: "Don't let her make as big a mess of it as I did.")

**Author's Note:**

> I keep trying to write stuff for "hunting my dress," but this dumb 15-minute thing is what came out instead


End file.
